In most company environments, a customer experience is not an isolated conversation but a series of experiences as a relationship evolves over time. The demand of customers to utilize multiple means of communication has led to disjointed conversations between the customer and the company. The fragmentation across systems to manage these interactions has proven challenging in understanding a customer's sentiment towards a company or if they are likely to recommend a company to other potential customers.
The medium in which customers communicate with companies has grown exponentially in a short period of time. Traditionally, companies communicate with their customers verbally (in person, telephone, etc.) or in written communications (mail, email, etc.). Modern communications have added even more channels (internet chat, sms, social media, apps, etc.). This has led to disjointed exchanges adding to both the length of the conversation and the volume of the content. In many cases, multiple employees and/or different groups within a company will interact with an individual customer throughout the same conversation. This complexity has resulted in companies having no effective way to understand the emotional state (customer sentiment) of a customer in real-time or as the relationship evolves with the company through its various interactions. Therefore, previous methods of measuring customer satisfaction have proven inadequate in measuring and monitoring real-time sentiment towards a company.